f a survival of an aristocratic
culture. The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than
"pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was
performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by
the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the
highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from
all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful
arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them
(See below, Ch. XIX). The idea of science thus generated persisted after
science had itself adopted the appliances of the arts, using them for
the production of knowledge, and after the rise of democracy. Taking
theory just as theory, however, that which concerns humanity is of more
significance for man than that which concerns a merely physical world.
In adopting the criterion of knowledge laid down by a literary culture,
aloof from the practical needs of the mass of men, the educational
advocates of scientific education put themselves at a strategic
disadvantage. So far as they adopt the idea of science appropriate
to its experimental method and to the movements of a democratic and
industrial society, they have no difficulty in showing that natural
science is more humanistic than an alleged humanism which bases its
educational schemes upon the specialized interests of a leisure
class. For, as we have already stated, humanistic studies when set
in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend to reduce
themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies, which in turn
tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer spoken. For
modern languages may evidently be put to use, and hence fall under the
ban. It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the
educational practices which have identified the "humanities"
exclusively with a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Greek and Roman art and
institutions made such important contributions to our civilization
that there should always be the amplest opportunities for making their
acquaintance. But to regard them as par excellence the humane studies
involves a deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject matter
which is accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate
a narrow snobbery: that of a learned class whose insignia are the
accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in quality